Software: Practice and Experience 41 (10): 1073-1103 (2011)

Assuring the Model Evolution of Protocol Software Specifications
by Regression Testing Process Improvement
1

Bo Jiang 2 , T.H. Tse 2 , Wolfgang Grieskamp 3 , Nicolas Kicillof 3 , Yiming Cao 3 , Xiang Li 3 , and W.K. Chan 4

[paper from Wiley Online Library | technical report TR-2011-07]

 ABSTRACT

Model-based testing helps test engineers automate their testing tasks so that they are more cost-effective. When the model is changed owing to the evolution of the specification, it is important to maintain the test suites up to date for regression testing. A complete regeneration of the whole test suite from the new model, although inefficient, is still frequently used in the industry, including Microsoft To handle specification evolution effectively, we propose a test case reusability analysis technique to identify reusable test cases of the original test suite based on graph analysis. We also develop a test suite augmentation technique to generate new test cases to cover the change-related parts of the new model. The experiment on four large protocol document testing projects shows that our technique can successfully identify a high percentage of reusable test cases and generate low-redundancy new test cases. When compared with a completely regeneration of the whole test suite, our technique significantly reduces regression testing time while maintaining the stability of requirement coverage over the evolution of requirements specifications.

Keywords: model-based testing; regression testing; protocol document testing

1. This research is supported in part by the General Research Fund of the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (project no. 717308), a Strategic Research Grant of City University of Hong Kong (project no. 7008039), and an internship at Microsoft Corp.
2. Department of Computer Science, The University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong.
3. Microsoft Corp., Redmond, WA, USA and Beijing, China
4. (Corresponding author.)
Department of Computer Science, City University of Hong Kong, Tat Chee Avenue, Hong Kong.
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